The Mess that We'll Become
by quite.bizzare
Summary: You are Harry Potter and you are not ruined after the war. I am Draco Malfoy and I will ruin your life.


Hi, I'm a bottle of vodka that you drink when you're twelve. I'll ruin your life. Hi, I'm Draco Malfoy and my father's in jail and my mother won't leave the house. I'm Draco Malfoy and I'll ruin your life - I've already ruined my own.

* * *

Harry Potter, we meet again when I am at a party and I'm high on coke and drunk on vodka, a chemical mix that makes you look like the most beautiful person in the room. It's nice to meet you, Harry. You saved the world, Harry, you've seen things but you don't deal with them like I do.

Harry, your life is not ruined. While I drink from my flask and you talk to me, you sip at water. Even though I don't say much, even though I mostly stare at you, you stand with me by the wall as everyone else dances and laughs and gets nowhere near as messed up as me.

And when the party is over you do not follow me to my dorm like I thought you would.

* * *

Harry Potter, growing up my best friend was Blaise Zabini. He lived close by and our mothers became somewhat close friends throughout the years. We had a secret language and ran through my big big house looking through its big big rooms.

When my daddy was put in prison for treason and murder and torture, I got so fucked up that night. I didn't accompany my mother to go speak to him one last time. After that meeting, she locked herself in her room. Blaise came over and I was high on EEEEEEE and drunk on God knows what. He sat with my on my leather couch that creaked when I got mad and hit him. I thought he was my father so I hit him.

He said Draco I thought you were my friend and he never spoke to me again.

Harry, Blaise was my brother and my last family member and now I have no one. Will you be my brother now?

* * *

Harry, we meet again again at a party. I am high on EEEEEEE again for the first time since they locked my daddy up. You look at me and ask if I'm alright. I say I don't know.

You lean forward, "Do you … do you drink a lot? You look like you drink a lot." Harry, your eyes are so green. Even behind your glasses they shine and they look like leaves. I wish I was a giraffe so I could eat the leaves of your eyes.

I don't tell you I drink a lot. You should know. Your friends sure do.

You change the subject. "Do you have classes tomorrow?"

… Yes.

No.

"Can you be up by eleven? We could get lunch after the crowd has left."

I nod.

* * *

We walk into the kitchens after everyone else has left. You sit at a small table in front of me. It is october and cold already, so you ask the house elf that come scurrying up to bring me hot chocolate and a scone. I sip at the hot chocolate without blowing on it and it burns my tongue and throat. It twists in my stomach that is not used to anything so sweet. I nibble at the scone because my real food is upstairs, in my empty dorm. No one's really come back to Hogwarts after the war; they're all dead or locked up or in St. Mungo's psych ward.

I'm not there. I should be, but I'm not because my mother who I haven't seen in five months pays the school to keep me here. She thinks I'm too stable to go to the fourth floor.

* * *

I puked up bits of scone and mostly blood this morning on the common room carpet. I didn't clean it up but I cried because you fed me the scone and I know that if you had seen what happened this morning you would have helped me. I cried because everything goes back to you, and you are imprinted in my very brain.

* * *

Harry, we are walking in the courtyards of Hogwarts and it is still October. Bees fly past you and you clutch my arm and gasp when they buzz past your ear. I tell you they're not that bad, the bees. They just want to live a little before winter comes.

It's cute how you freak out over such small things.

That night you drag me down to the kitchen to eat a cheesecake prepared by the elves. It has stripes on it and I tell you in looks like bumblebees. You tell me to shut the hell up but then you laugh and eat some more. You've been feeding me for days, Harry, and I'm starting to be able to keep the food down. I am not skin and bones anymore.

* * *

Harry Potter, you've kissed me three times. We were in the common room all three times. You asked about my father, and I didn't answer you. I turned my face away from you first, then my body as I got up to leave. But you reached out from the sofa and grabbed my wrist. Your thumb rested on the middle of your middle finger, and I thought for a moment how thin I actually was. You asked me not to leave, but you didn't say please so I shook you off and continued on my way to the stairs. Harry Potter, you followed me to the stairs and you grabbed my hand this time, pulled me close. Your lips were velvety and tasted sweet, like the candy you'd said you'd had before you came here.

I guess I can't think of you as a brother anymore.

I write about this for a paper in a class and it is not what I'm supposed to write. I get an FFFFFFF and I don't care.

* * *

Harry, one day you tell me you want to be an Auror. You ask me what I want to be and I am silent. I don't know anymore. But you know what you want to be because you never don't know anything. I wonder how many of my old friends you will arrest. I wonder if you will arrest me.

Can you arrest someone for ruining your life?

* * *

It is the Christmas holidays and you invite me back to your place in Muggle London. I bring all the shit on my coffee table with me, even the pot, even though I haven't smoked weed in five years. It doesn't do anything for me anymore. I don't bring my alcohol because you have some at your house that you won't notice missing. I know you won't notice it gone because the first day we get to your flat, you blush and apologize for the empty fridge. You leave to go get food and I find your booze and I drink two bottles in the five hours you're gone.

I don't think it takes that long to get groceries, but I don't question it.

* * *

A week and a half before Christmas, all your friends come over for a party. This is the first time I've drank your champagne in front of you. I have to drink to deal with the looks your friends give me.

They exchange gifts and I get nothing. I don't care. I have you.

* * *

The day you kick me out is on New Year's Eve. Your friends are over for another party and I am drunk and high on two lines I snorted while you were gone, just before you got back and your friends started showing up. I think I am quiet but you keep whispersnapping at me to be quieter, until finally you shout it. I snap back that I am not being loud, and only then do you look me in the eyes and notice how blown my pupils are. Your voice gets louder as you shout at me in disbelief, asking the rhetorical question of Are you high and not waiting for my snapping answer. You go into the back room, your bedroom, and you grab my things. You push me out the door. It is cold and snowy. I don't have my jacket, I never had gloves or a scarf and it is snowing.

Your friends were all staring at me when you lead me to the door, and before you slammed it in my face I saw them look at you with I Told You So eyes and I wanted to kill them.

I walk back to Hogwarts with only one of my three bags. You gave me the one with all my shit in it. You didn't know what's in it. I have the things I need and that's all that matters.

* * *

Blaise Zabini died on Saturday. He was out in Hogsmeade and he was murdered and they haven't found the killer. He was drunk, they said. Some say he tried to start a fight, others say it was an attack.

My childhood friend has died.

I am going to die.

* * *

Harry Potter, I am skin and bones again. I have not left my room in two weeks. I have not slept for five days. I am lying on my couch next to my coffee table with all my drugs spread on it. There is a vodka bottle in my hand and the howler you sent me three days after New Year's is in the other room. It was the quietest howler I've ever heard.

I want to hear your voice again but I can hardly move. I can't move at all. I'm scared.

I want to see you again but I can't because I can hardly move and when I even tried to go outside you'd locked me out of your house and I never see you around school. The only contact I've had with you is the howler, but I was too pissed, too sad, too everything all at once to write back. To shout back.

I wanted to, but I didn't.

* * *

Harry Potter, I don't know where the idea came from, but I am still on my bed and there is an empty bottle of vodka in my hands and I smash it against my stomach. It breaks inside me and it kind of really fucking hurts.

I remember your howler again and there is blood coming out of my stomach where the bottle is sticking out and I still want to hear your voice, even your quiet insults. "You're … you're scary, Draco. You scare people. You need help."

I have thrown up on myself, and I can't even get up to wipe it off. I know if you were here you would be terrified but you would help me and the fact that you're not here makes me turn my head into the red, red carpet and cry until I fall asleep.

* * *

When I wake up you are beside my bed in St. Mungo's. You are crying and I'm saying sorry. My stomach really hurts and my head hurts and my bones hurt. Everything hurts and you are crying and that hurts more than anything. You tell me you love me and I say it back.

* * *

They wean me off of the coke and pot and ecstasy and everything I was on with different drugs, and then they wean me off of those with nothing but food. I can't feeling my ribs anymore and it doesn't hurt to lay down anymore. There is a big red scar on my stomach, and they had to work for hours to get the shards out of my small intestine.

They tell me I spent three days in my dorm that smelled like hell itself, bleeding out and puking on myself at irregular intervals. You tell me that you heard no one had seen me in weeks and you came to see what was wrong and you smelled my dorm from down the corridor.

* * *

When they let me out of the hospital because I can walk a little bit, we take time off of school and spend it at your flat. You make me rest because I'm still always in pain and we watch your Muggle thing called a television. Your friends come over and give me warm smiles that weren't there before.

It's funny how almost dying makes everyone care and makes me appreciate things much more.


End file.
